SaaStr

A social community of 500,000+ SaaS founders and executives and over 3,000,000 views a month dedicated to sharing the best learnings, insights and practices around building and scaling SaaS businesses.  From nothing, to Initial Traction, to Initial Scale, and beyond.

Paying back and sharing key learnings (hard knock and otherwise) from going from $1m to $100m+ in SaaS.

Continuing to work on ways to do this bigger and more effectively than ever.

Puts on www.SaaStrAnnual.com and SaaStrEuropa.com for 15,000+ SaaS Founders.  PLEASE COME!! :)

#1 enterprise & SaaS blog / content / writer on Quora.

Trusted Advisor

SaaStr Fund

Out of a $150,000,000+ venture fund, we lead $250k-$5m initial investments in great SaaS companies with founders that are Better Than Us.  Generally, with at Least 10 Unaffiliated Customers.

We've done some good ones, including leading the very first or very early VC investments in Algolia, Automile, Logikcull, Mixmax, Pipedrive, PlatoHQ, SalesLoft, Talkdesk, MaestroQA, HelloOffice, Gorgias.io, Mapistry, RevenueCat, Owner, Treasury Prime and others.  I also serve as an advisor or smaller investor in OpusClip, Showpad, Front, Intercom, Greenhouse, Retention Science, Sqreen.io / Datadog, among other emerging leaders.

Seed Stage Lead Investor & Founder Champion

Adobe Systems

Adobe Sign / EchoSign from Adobe is the leading 100% web-based e-signature and contract automation service with 1.1m customers and 16m users and used by 9/10 of the top leaders on the web, Facebook, Google, Pandora, Workday, Groupon, Twitter, LivingSocial, Yelp, Oracle, SAP, Coca-Cola, Dell, Citrix, VMWare, EMC, Taleo, Successfactors, Mastercard, you name it.

In March 2013, Adobe announced EchoSign and the Web Services business had hit $64,000,000 in ARR at Q1'13 and $140,000,000+ ARR by FYE'13, and $400,000,000 ARR by Q1'16.

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More than 95% of all documents that are digitally signed use the Adobe family of products:  Acrobat, Reader, LiveCycle, and since July 2011, #1 ranked EchoSign.  

And you can start using EchoSign for free from any browser.  http://www.echosign.com   #thepowerofadobe

Vice President, Web Business Services

Adobe Sign / EchoSign is the next great on-demand sales tool.  It is simply the fastest and easiest way to get contracts signed, tracked, and filed.  E-signature or fax signature.  Our 5,000,000 users and 50,000+ customers (including leaders such as Google, Facebook, Pandora, Groupon, American Express, Comcast, Aetna, Twitter, LivingSocial, BT, GE, Qualcomm, CIGNA, Dow Jones, P&G, American Express, Facebook, Dell, TimeWarner, Delta Airlines, Symantec, VMware, AOL, Citrix, Nationwide, UnitedHealthcare and many more) close deals on average in just 42 minutes using EchoSign.  Send, Sign, Done.  We're profitable, we're doing cool things -- and WE ARE HIRING!

Adobe Sign / EchoSign was acquired by Adobe in July 2011 and was backed by Emergence Capital, me, friends, and other investors.

Co-founder, ceo

NanoGram Devices Corp

At NanoGram Devices we pioneered using nanotechnology to dramatically enhance the performance of power sources for implantable medical devices.  NDC technology enables implantable defibrillators and pacemakers to last years longer -- saving lives.  NDC was acquired by the market leader for speciality power sources, Greatbatch Inc. (NYSE: GB) for ~$50,000,000 13 months after founding.

NanoSVO was qualified for implantable use in 2007 and has since gone on to extend/save thousands of lives.

Served as VP, Corp Dev @ affiliate NeoPhotonics Corp

Co-Founder, President

NeoPhotonics

I was brought in by the CEO and the Board to investigate and commercialize new uses for the Company's technology at revenue zero.  Ultimately, I helped the CEO focus the core business on telecommunications and raise $30m in venture capital, and then licensed its nascent technology for implantable power sources, using that to start and co-found NanoGram Devices (see above).

NeoPhotonics has since gone on to a successful IPO on the NYSE and a multi-hundred million dollar revenue business.

Vice President, Strategic Development

BabyCenter

Since its founding, BabyCenter has been the leading destination on the Internet for new and expectant parents.  According to Alexa it is the 300th highest trafficked U.S. site on the 'net, dwarfing all competitors.  

Consumer Health Interactive; Johnson & Johnson; eToys

Sr. Director, Corporate Development

Helping, founding, funding, and growing B2B start-ups.  Making it a positive-sum game for everyone involved.  VC checks $500k-$4m @ SaaStrFund.com

"Do or do not. There is no try."

Specialties: helping people grow and become their best.  doing not the impossible, but the unlikely.  never giving up.

Join us IRL at SaastrAnnual.com

Before you sell,
Before you quit,
Before you step down

At best, we have 3 >real< start-ups in us as founders.  

Often just 1 or maybe 2.

If you have any traction at all -- maybe find a way to make this one work.

Jason M. Lemkin

SaaStr Annual 2025 is May 13-15 in SF Bay!! See You There!!

So much changed in the venture capital markets the past 24 months, even early stage. The change is still being figured out. 

YC demo day is still as hot as ever. Seed funding seems to be all over the place, with many seed investors investing the same as before. But later stage investing has clearly changed. Yes, AI is hot at the Series A and later stage in B2B. The rest? Not as much. The expectations, the metrics, the pool of VCs. Every Series A and later round has now changed.

🤷‍♀️And what I find is that most founders just don’t know. 

They don’t see the change directly, and they don’t really know for sure if they are fundable or not. Especially when so many of the big rounds on TechCrunch were closed in different times or in different spaces.

So here’s my simple suggestion, in good times and bad:

👉Once a quarter at least, at your board meetings, if nothing else, if you have them — ask each of your 4-5 largest investors:

⏩Are we fundable today? What are the odds we can close a round? And at what terms?

You’ll often be surprised. And the one thing VCs usually know better than founders is how fundable you are. That’s what they do all day, every day, after all.

Especially the founders doing pretty well, but not knocking it out of the park, are often surprised. Especially the founders who had such an easy time raising the last round, are often surprised.

I’d say at least half are surprised.

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